Joe Soucheray: OK, it's cold. But when even Packers fans need a bailout...

Green Bay Packers fans deal with frigid temperatures before an NFL wild-card playoff football game between the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Mike Roemer)

(Pioneer Press: John Doman)

It made Page 14A of the Pioneer Press the other morning, but it was front-page news in bold type in New York that a winter storm was fast approaching and that the city's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, said he was "focused like a laser on protecting this city and getting everyone ready."

New Yorkers seem to need mothering types at the helm to save them from secondhand smoke and large cups of pop -- they call it soda -- and the various and horrific ingredients of fast food. They apparently don't even take it personally when the mayor tells them to stay home. That what's de Blasio told the people -- stay home.

New York's governor, Andrew Cuomo, closed many of the state's highways. New Jersey's governor, Chris Christie, told people to stay home so that first responders could be the first to get to the scene of an accident, there being slim chance of one if everybody stays home.

Newsgathering institutions, of course, act in concert with the progressive political class to make every heave and sigh of nature a crisis, for it is axiomatic of the left to never waste a crisis, meaning that if a crisis can be manufactured, they can pretend to be important enough to do something about it.

Personally, I can think of nothing more exciting than being out on Long Island, or better yet, out on Cape Cod, with a winter storm fast approaching and the sea crashing in a symphony of beautiful noise. But that's just me. I suppose if I lived on Long Island and I was faced with 10 inches of snow or so, I'd probably stay home. But if I needed to be someplace, I don't want a mayor or a governor or any other elected hack telling me to stay put.

Ronald Reagan once famously pointed out in a debate that he paid for the microphone. We paid for the highways. Mayoral and gubernatorial ninnies issue their admonitions on the presumption of getting the plows out, which doesn't account for the bursting of their buttons when they get in front of a microphone that they didn't pay for and take personal responsibility for seeing the masses through, well, a winter weekend.

A photo at a New York news website showed a Trader Joe's in Brooklyn with lines out the door and down the block.

Isn't that precious? I guess, if you are of a collective mindset, there is nothing more comforting while staring out your window than having some cheap wine on hand and maybe some cheese to go with it.

Meanwhile, here on the frozen tundra, we will hear soon, if we haven't already, our own political protectors telling us how to dress so we don't freeze to death over about an 80-hour stretch where we might not get above zero. Gov. Mark Dayton said Friday that all of Minnesota's public schools would be closed Monday. Because I am not entirely heartless, I don't dispute the wisdom of keeping kids safe and reminding them not to stick their tongues on a lamp post.

St. Paul Central students head for their buses at the close of the school day on Friday afternoon January 3, 2014. Minnesota school children will get an extra day of holiday vacation thanks to extremely frigid temperatures forecast for Monday. (Pioneer Press: John Doman)

When you throw in the news gatherers with the political class acting in concert to make a crisis out of the weather, you also have to include the television meteorologists. The best mongers going are on the Weather Channel, where the people on the street who lean into the wind always defer to a "doctor" back in the studio to explain the isobars, meaning somebody at the studio with a Ph.D. I believe the Weather Channel has had a hand in naming winter storms, the bruiser in New England called Hercules.

OK. But there is danger in all this. As of early Friday, about 7,500 tickets remained unsold for Sunday's NFL playoff game at Green Bay, where they are hosting San Francisco. As I find it hard to believe that they represent 7,500 people trying to get to Trader Joe's, it can only mean that Packers fans have succumbed to the hysteria.

Packers fans were bailed out later Friday, avoiding a TV blackout of the game. In addition to fan sales, a group of Packers corporate partners, led by Associated Bank, bought the remaining available tickets to ensure the sellout and TV broadcast, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Other corporate partners included Fox TV affiliates WITI (Milwaukee), WLUK (Green Bay) and WFXS (Wausau) and Mills Fleet Farm.